All Forum Posts by: Trevor Mauch

@Scott T. Sweet man! Small world you're from Roseburg too! haha. Crazy. Well it's changed a bit since you were here, lots of great stuff happening today! 

On the ads... giving people options is always good and if people are ready to text or call directly from the ad... sweet, let them text or call (so we do tend to turn on those settings on ads at the start to see how they perform in that market). But if they're not ready to call... they likely need more info... which is where your educational website comes in.  So I know this isn't a clear answer... but some markets the call ads are performing great and picking up new leads that wouldn't have come in otherwise. But in my opinion... bringing them to your website where you can build credibility w/ them is always the best option... when you bring your unique value proposition and your credibility you start to de-commoditize your service. 

@Joey Smajd We'd love to work with you man! Hit me up if we can help with anything at all and we'll get your site dialed in. 

But to be fair, even w/ our stellar customer service record from time to time we've dropped the ball for one reason or another... it just happens with thousands of customers... so it may have been a hiccup in their system or something... but my guess is their support didn't "ghost" you, it was likely a systems issue or just bandwidth. Or, we've even had it happen where we were sending the client back replies but they never saw them because their email was filtering them out as spam for some reason. Anyhow, just saying this to give LP the benefit of the doubt and I know how difficult it can be to scale a company into the thousands of clients while still retaining an amazing client experience. It's not easy, but it's important and a worthy challenge. 

Hit us up! We're here for ya :-) 

@Tim S. Great thread you started here man and I always love it when investors look seriously at their marketing and make sure it's what they want to represent their business. 

First off, I'm not sure which sites you're looking at for Carrot but over the years there have been thousands online and once a client launches a site on our platform they can then customize it within our high performing framework... and we've seen some really bad customizations in the past that really did decrease the credibility of their business in my eyes. Wacky colors, bad videos, weird copy, removed our forms and tried to reinvent the wheel... those types of customizations almost always reduce the performance of their site vs. the way we built it. 

On the flip side, I'd be happy as heck to send you a list of Carrot sites you can take a look at that are performing insanely well in their markets and are a great mix of modern design and high performance copy / design. 

Just let me know on the above :-)

It's a really fine balance when it comes to what to put in a marketing message. 

What we feel looks "good" doesn't necessarily always relay the message in the way that our prospect will best absorb it. 

When someone has a problem... a real problem... and they're researching... you can better believe that they'll read a TON of information when researching that decision. And as long as the information is structured and written in a way that flows w/ the way they make decisions and it addresses their pains, fears, frustrations, shows them how you can relieve those, walks through your process, builds credibility for you... they'll read it. We all do this when we're researching something we care about. 

But if you're not your target prospect... or if you send your site to a friend and they say "I'd never read that... that's so many words"... if they're not your target market or a professional copywriter... I wouldn't put too much stock into their opinion because if they're not going through that problem... the website won't speak to them at their gut level... and they'll just look at all of the words as "clutter" that doesn't add value to them. 

I wrote a blog post recently on this topic where I walk through how a motivated house seller thinks and how they make decisions... w/ a small infographic that walks through the 5 Stages Of The Decision Process For A Motivated House Seller. You can find it on my blog. If your website doesnt' address the prospects biggest questions and concerns at each of those stages... you're not delivering the message they need to feel fully informed on their decision... and they'll likely bounce and head to a site that does answer their questions. 

Do this... 

Just think of the way you make decisions and research big decisions in your life and ask yourself if you read a lot of stuff or would make a massive financial decision based on a landing page. 

Here's one last example... Bats In My Attic... 

Kinda funny story, but my family and I moved to a house on a river recently and when you live by the river there's all kinds of critters. 

So we had hundreds of bats get into our attics last summer and it became a big problem I needed to solve. 

So what did I do? 

I hit the internet... and started typing phrases like... "how to remove bats from an attic" "bat removal experts" "can bats make you sick" etc. etc. Tons of phrases. 

And this site kept coming up all... the... time. 

http://batsintheattic.org/ <=== 

It's an ugly as heck site. Could they make it look nicer? I'm sure they could. But the thing is... that would all be vanity for the site owner... because the gold on that site is in the copy. The content. The message. 

I read probably 20 pages on that site... I kept clicking their links and learning... read testimonials... and finally called their "local" number on there to talk w/ a local specialist. 

The thing is... this site is just a lead generation site for wildlife control companies. But it got me. And it had tons of value and by the time I was done reading it I knew this company was an expert, they knew their stuff, and I didn't want to trust my families health with a non-expert on this topic. 

If I would have saw that site before I had the problem... I wouldn't have read hardly any of it. It would have looked "cluttered" to me. But once I had the problem... it was my savior. 

A lesson I learned long ago is go w/ data, testing, and results... not our own personal preferences on what we think looks good. And NEVER ask advice from a friend who doesn't have that problem my copy is trying to solve unless they're a professional copywriter. 

I'd be happy to show you a slew of sites you'll love the design of but also that perform really well. 

DM me and lets chat man! 

@Troy Copeland Thanks man! We're always working to improve more and more everyday and Pete was pumped up after he chatted with you and we're glad we could make sure to get you on the right track. Feel free to hit me up personally anytime man! We've got you :-) 

Hey @Bill Webster thanks for being transparent and helping to challenge us to improve where we're weak man. Truly appreciate it. 

My team let me know about this yesterday AM and I dove in to see where we may have gone wrong. 

First off, I see you joined up, congrats and welcome aboard! 

Also I see you've already had several great chats w/ our Customer Success team as you dive into your account. Don't hesitate to hit us up as much as you need and make sure to get on our Coaching Calls on Tuesdays at 11am PST or hop on a 1 on 1 strategy call w/ Adrian. We've got you! It's a bit of work upfront but we can help you through it. 

But to address our shortfall on the phone experience... 

... as we've grown we've focused on building an amazing customer experience. And over the years we really put a lot of energy on building out the overall support ecosystem that we have today that we consistently hear from clients serves up the "best experience" they've ever had w/ any company. 

But I can tell you without a doubt the one hole in our armor is our ability to roll out full 24/7 phone support. Frankly... I'd give us a C- on that... and that's one thing going into this year we set the intention to continually improve our ability to deliver better and better support over the phone. 

Looking at your calls, the big mistake we made was closing our webinar offer on Sunday night... but not having anyone available Sunday night to take calls for questions like you had. That's 100% on us even though our posted support hours are 9-5pm PST M - F. If we're saying a deadline for something is on a specific day... we should make it easier for people to connect w/ us on that day for questions. It was an oversight on our end honestly and we're looking at ways to improve it moving forward. You called us a bunch over the weekend (which I'm crazy grateful you did and you didn't give up!) but we don't have weekend hours currently. As soon as our team got into the office on Monday AM they rang you right away... and I know talking w/ Pete we noticed another deficiency in our phone sales process... that Pete on our team who leads phone sales is on the East Coast... and most of your calls were later in the day which were after his hours (but during great hours for you)... so you ended up playing phone tag w/ our team. 

Again, none of this is on you... and ultimately while I feel our overall support structure is world-class... our phone efforts need to improve and we're working on that big time. 

In the past 3 months we've hired 3 new amazing team members (one of them a Carrot client herself). They're hired up to beef up our current support ecosystem and also add on more ability for us to hop on phone calls during work hours and more support for high level clients as well. 

@Troy Copeland man, really sorry we didn't nail it for you w/ the phone experience and like I mentioned above it's just something where we've focused so much energy in making certain other parts of our support structure so amazing (1 on 1 strategy calls w/ our team, weekly coaching calls, instant live chat and email, etc.) that we honestly missed the opportunity to also focus on the phone experience just as good. Once a client is in the doors here at Carrot, like @Elizabeth Wilson mentioned I feel there's no company that can beat us (and yes we're happy as heck to hop on a phone call where needed)... but admittedly we've relied too much on technology for inbound sales phone calls and likely are missing out on working w/ awesome clients such as yourself. 

Again y'all, the feedback is grately appreciated and it confirms our move to build out our customer success team in a big way... but also highlights the importance of making sure we answer every sales call live as well. 

With that said, what we're the most proud of is the results we help our clients receive... and the market and data shows the power of what our clients are doing with our system... and we take this as a solid challenge to make our phone game come up to speed w/ the rest of our Customer Experience. 

William, hit us up anytime and we're happy to hop on a call! Pop into LiveChat and ask one of those reps to give you a call and we'll get you taken care of asap. 

Have a great week y'all! 

@Scott T. Great question man! 

Just so we're on the same page... are you asking if Google PPC works to get people to call you from being a cold lead vs. just people searching your brand out? 

@DanBarrett w/ AdwordsNerds can better attest to this w/ even more data... but we released a report on PPC effectiveness that monitored millions of searches and over 5k leads for motivated house sellers... and we can show w/ data that Google PPC (and Bing too) are producing a great ROI to attract new clients who weren't doing a brand search. How many of them call vs. opt into the website? That varies widely by market we've found... many clients report that over half of their leads come from phone calls... some report less than 20% come from phone calls. But in the end, the mixed reviews we usually see online about PPC working or not working come down to the variables that people aren't honing in correctly in their campaigns.

1. Their ad targeting: Is their targeting solid? Targeting the right keywords w/ the right ad groups setup the right way? Doing this part wrong can lead to tons of wasted PPC dollars and a low or no ROI.

2. The ad copy: Is the ad copy compelling? Does it help build credibility? Does it stand out? The higher your CTR the lower your overall cost per click... which can drive up your ROI. This is where experienced PPC experts come in and pay for themselves many times over.

3. The website you're sending them to: Most websites aren't setup to perform well when it comes to converting a visitor into a lead. This alone could make or break the campaign. Every week we hear from clients who moved to Carrot and when they do, their PPC campaigns start to perform better just because of the conversion rate side of things (especially on mobile)

But ya, PPC is continually a very effective way to get seller leads... both those who do branded search and are vetting and verifying you... and those who find you cold from searching a phrase like "sell my house fast [insert city]". Just need to make sure those 3 things above are dialed in and focused on ROI.

Go get 'em! Hit me up if we can help you w/ anything :-) 

@Will F. Really great question man! 

In competitive markets... we see lots of clients getting really great results w/ organic and PPC leads coming in. 

In the L.A. market as an example... 3 of the top 5 results for "we buy houses los angeles" are Carrot clients right now... and looking in their accounts just now they're all getting leads. 

But yes, in competitive markets it definitely takes more time, money, and patience to crack through the larger established players. 

But I can say w/ experience that someone who decides to dive into driving leads online today... in most any market... w/ the right budget, team to help them, and their strategy and website dialed in... can get a solid ROI w/ both PPC in the short-term and SEO in the long-term.

We recently did it w/ clients in both Baltimore and Phoenix... within weeks had leads coming in and their first deals closed in those markets within 40 days of the start (using a targeted PPC campaign)... then over the long-term working on building up their SEO. 

A few things in competitive markets though... 

1. Go broad and narrow at the same time: What I mean here is people try to go after just the top 1 or 3 keywords... which is were the majority of the focus is w/ the big players. But what we do and have our clients do is go after those top 1-3 keywords as a long-term play... but then launch location specific landing pages (which we've been doing for years at Carrot) for every city you'd buy houses in... optimize those for SEO... and launch targeted PPC campaigns in those markets. I have some whiteboard videos where I go over this on our blog. 
2. Make sure you're ranking very well for "[your company name] reviews". When there's a lot of options for a seller... they tend to do their research before making a decision. If you're not controlling the conversation around your brand, in competitive markets the people who build the best credibility profile win those deals where the people are researching their options. This is a biggie that people don't focus on. I have an episode of the CarrotCast where I go into this in detail. 

Great questions y'all! 

As far as asking on BP for people who are getting great results from any type of marketing... my experience is that the investors who are consistently growing their businesses and getting great results at anything aren't hopping around forums online during their spare time. For transparency, I'd be happy to show you anything you want to see (except actual leads for a client) to help you w/ your research. 

We publish the volume of leads that come into our Carrot clients site on our website for anyone to see (just shy of 40k online opt in leads per month... then another 20k+ phone call leads per month according to client surveys)... and ultimately as with any type of marketing... online marketing when done right works... whether you're w/ Carrot or LP or Wordpress or any other system. 

If the right foundational principles are followed... 

1. The right strategy for your business and your market (we can help you w/ that)
2. The right traffic plan for your budget and time (we can help you w/ that)
3. A website dialed in and setup to perform well in converting visitors to leads at a high rate (more online leads come through Carrot than any other platform for investors) 
4. You know how to close leads at a high rate to a deal once they come in (simply answering the calls live vs. going to voice mail will increase that ratio big time in a competitive market)
5. And the support to help you refine your strategy as you go (we help you w/ that)

... if those principles are followed and you're patient you'll get results. 

Hit me up and I'd be happy to show you anything you want to see man! 

Good luck on your search and go crush it! We're here for you if you want to ramp things up and get a solid plan together. 

@Samuel R. welcome aboard my friend! 

Go get 'em! Reach out to me directly if we can help you with anything at all. 

Focus on the long game man... focus on building something with momentum and high value over the long run and implement like mad. It's the only way to build a business. We've got ya :-) 

@Samuel R. Go get 'em man! 

It pumps us up to see people take that leap in life. It's NO easy feat to launch and build a successful business. 

You'll go through big ups and downs... 

... you'll wonder if you made the right decision...

... you'll love the freedom (but make sure you build the business intentionally to create true freedom or that business could actually trap you... believe me... I've done one before and will never again)

... and the cool thing is that you know it can be done (ton's of people have done it before you, tons...

... you just need to buckle down, align w/ the right resources and people, and take consistent action and don't quit. 

I did a podcast episode recently with a Carrot client in San Diego that did a couple big wholesale deals... was celebrating big time... then hit a brick wall when it came to getting more deals done. But the cool thing is he pivoted his business to land... spun up Carrot sites for land... got to work... and he's doing very very well buying and selling land when most people are rushing into wholesaling houses. 

So just keep a pulse on the market and if there are opportunities to capture opportunity that most others aren't looking at in this market cycle... be perceptive to it. 

Reach out if we can help you w/ anything man! 

Really excited for you.

@Joe Yobaccio! Hope you're having an awesome day man! 

Great questions man. 

Ya so with online marketing like you mentioned there are 2 parts. 

1) Dialing in your website (performance, credibility, etc.)

2) Traffic (getting qualified people to your site)

A lot of people (even Carrot members) toss up a site and don't take clear consistent action on step 2... so I'm glad you're asking that questions up front man! 

So, we don't have an internal SEO service that we offer (except our high level Concierge level services for investors already doing 3+ deals a month w/ a budget over $3k-$4k/mo for their online marketing) but we do have a stellar SEO firm in our marketplace that is a preferred provider that has done phenomenal SEO work for our clients over the years. They're not cheap but very good. 

Ya, depending on your market you could possibly get by w/ a $10/day budget... but that really depends on the type of leads and the market. If you're in a market like Phoenix and looking for house sellers... you're going to need a budget probably 5-10x + that to really compete for sellers at scale. But in smaller markets with a well honed PPC campaign... YES... you could likely get some traction and a great roi w/ $10/day. 

On the PPC side of things, we do PPC internally for the large clients but we have a phenominal PPC firm that we recommend lots of our clients to that only do PPC for investors. Same thing... it's not cheap but w/ PPC and SEO you usually get what you pay for. You can definitely find someone to manage PPC for $300 - $500/mo but in our experience it's not *usually* the soup to nuts (Google, Bing, FB retargeting ads, daily management by a human being, etc.). 

On the landing page side of things, like Lucas mentioned (you rock by the way man! Always awesome seeing our clients go out there and crush it!) I'd start doing PPC w/ just driving the traffic to your Carrot site home page. It's dialed in to convert well and then only add landing pages as you need to niche down your message on your PPC marketing. Which we could show you how to do it or help you do it. 

I hope that helped a bit! Feel free to reach out and Pete on our team or one of our other awesome team members can walk you through everything. We'd love to work w/ ya if you feel it's a fit :-) 

@Art Nava ! Great question. 

@Phil Reames glad you're seeing solid results w/ us man! 

Phil, lets connect... I went to your site and see it's pulling in some leads since you launched it a couple months ago... but I'd love to help you dial in the customization more on it so you can really stand out. In a market like today credibility is crazy important and we can show you some cool things you can do to your Carrot site to dial in that credibility and personalization so you stand out. 

Art, connect w/ Phil to see how he's doing it or reach out to us anytime and we can walk you through how we may be able to help you. 

Have a great week guys! 

@Benjamin Barredo wow I just saw your reply on here. Big apologies! 

PPC is "pay per click" marketing. 

The ads at the top and bottom of Google search listings... or bing... or even the ads in Facebook. 

We're seeing a pretty darn predictable and consistent ROI w/ PPC in most markets (not all... markets like Miami are really hard... and the more competitive the market the more money you need to have in your ppc budget to succeed).

But ya, reach out anytime and I can guide you down the right path on how to manage your own ads, etc. We have some blog posts on our site that walk through it. 

On the SEO side of things... I don't have any books on SEO I recommend... but lots of blog posts and that SEO training of ours that you mentioned. We're going through the next 60 days and updating our SEO training course in a big way... so keep an eye out for a ton of updates there. 

Have a great week!